Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2025
Today, on the 80th anniversary of VE day, we paused to reflect on all those from our communities who gave their lives in the course of the second world war, for the freedom and liberation of Europe and for the peace and security of us all.
The war memorials in our towns and villages are etched with the names of those who fell—on land, at sea and in the air—and who made the ultimate sacrifice for the things that we value so much.
Today, I am also thinking of those who suffered so much and who lost their lives here in Scotland and in the communities that I represent across West Scotland. I am thinking of the terrible toll that the blitz took on communities in Clydebank, Greenock and so many other industrial towns across the west coast. The scars run deep in those communities, even to this day—whether they be scars in the minds of people who survived, physical scars or the scars that were inflicted on the landscape, which would never look the same again.
Many of us have brought personal stories and we have heard very eloquent ones. Those stories are important. Many of us have loved ones who lived through and perhaps served in the war.
I have been thinking a lot about my grandmother, who would have been 95 if she were still alive. She did not live to see me be elected to the Scottish Parliament. When she passed, she left me a painting of Craighead in Barrhead, where she was born and where she grew up. It sits in my office upstairs. I was thinking about that painting today, because it shows the house from which my grandmother experienced the second world war. She would tell us stories frequently about the blackout, rationing, carrying your gas mask to school, and the work that she did for the local co-operative society in her teenage years during the war. I was also thinking about how she would have left that close in Craighead on VE day to join the celebrations in the community of Barrhead. I remember the sense of relief and joy that she expressed that war in Europe had finally come to an end.
There is something else important that I have been thinking today about my gran and her generation. We have heard it articulated already in speeches. My gran’s generation—the generation who lived through the war—not only gifted us freedom and security but went on to gift us so much more of the things that we value in this country today. They are the generation who rebuilt this country from the ashes and rubble of war. They are the generation who turned their shoulder to the wheel, having faced the storm. Under the reforming Labour Government of Clement Attlee, they gifted us institutions such as the NHS and the welfare state, new towns and access to education.
They did it in their own ways, washing floors or putting bricks and mortar together. They fed children and helped the ill and disabled. In doing that, they also gave us something more fundamental. They gave us values that endure to this day: the values of standing with and helping our neighbours, of hard work and dedication, of keeping calm and carrying on and of never giving in.
This evening, I will join people in my community of Neilston as we light a beacon for peace. When we do so, I will think of all those who gave their lives and those who gave so much of the life that they had after the war to building this country. I will think of my gran and all those people who stood with her, whom we remember today, on VE day.
16:18